E3 2009: Darkest of Days Progress Report

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Think Marty McFly – That is, if he were packing a pulse rifle to save Doc Brown.

By Jeff Haynes

There have been plenty of books and movies that have featured time travel and the hazards of manipulating the space time continuum. The implications on the future could be subtle or they could be horrific, potentially killing vital people or causing catastrophes. But what if you went back in time to save people that weren't supposed to be killed in the first place? That's the concept behind Darkest of Days, 8monkey Labs and Phantom EFX's upcoming first person shooter. At E3 2009, I got a chance to check out this twist on the classic time travel tale.

In Darkest of Days, you play as Alexander Morris, a soldier fighting with Custer at Little Big Horn. Of course, you're one of the troops that wind up getting severely injured during the battle against hundreds of Native Americans, and as you lay there dying, with numerous arrows stuck in your body, a time portal opens next to you and a man propels you into the future. Here, you are healed by a time agency and informed that you have been selected by the agency to help their mission of saving people from untimely deaths throughout history. You, along with the other agents, are soldiers that are considered missing in action, and thereby expendable to go throughout history trying to correct these mistakes.

8monkey Labs attempted to accomplish five separate goals with this title. The company wanted a completely new look for their game, so instead of licensing the Unreal Engine, it built a new one called Marmoset, which was specifically designed to handle a large number of features, like image based lighting, large groups of people onscreen at one moment, and post rendering effects. The engine can display huge battles with more than three hundred people on screen at one time all with their own AI and pathfinding. This helps to expand the battlefield, and as you explore, you'll find that there are plenty of areas that you can explore or use as a way to get around enemy lines and attack objectives from behind. Helping you accomplish these tasks are plenty of futuristic weaponry that you can use to decimate your opponents, as well as a new mechanic that's central to the time travelling plot.

As you go through each battle, you'll run into people surrounded by a blue aura, which indicates that these people are supposed to survive the battle because of their contributions to history. While they may still attack you, you can wound them by shooting them in the arm or leg and effectively take them out of the battle so they can go on to fulfill their destiny. By allowing these people to live, you'll earn upgrades for your weapons. If you don't particularly care about that, you can also choose to terminate them, but be warned that these actions will have consequences. In fact, you'll find that another agency of time travelers will open time portals and attempt to stop your time altering ways with brutal force. You have the option of attacking and killing the soldiers, taking their weapons that you can then use in battle.

In fact, this struggle between two agencies of time travelers becomes a central part of the overall plot, I was told, and as I was shown some of the different time periods within the game, such as World War I, World War II and Pompeii, it was easy to see that this will be a wide ranging battle across some incredibly rendered periods in history. 8monkey has gone out of their way to make sure that levels are historically accurate, and you'll find that every time you leap into a new area, you'll receive period accurate maps that will show you where you need to go, as well as the position of enemy forces and where you have to save people. Each period will have multiple missions that should take you around twenty to twenty-five hours to complete, but what's even cooler is the fact that you're not stuck in one campaign. You can start the Civil War campaign, for example, and then leap through time to the World War II battle if you get tired of those battles. Darkest of Days could be a shooter to keep an eye out for if you're an action and science fiction fan.